Long
familiarity with Hardy's novels had led to an afternoon of
conversation with the author himself in the mildness of old age.
But he remained for me a still inexplicable figure, belonging to
an earlier century, yet in other respects so clearly abreast, if
not ahead, of the emotions of our own times, that at eighty he saw
the young men beginning to follow him. It was a reading of "The
Dynasts," in the tall, red volumes of the new edition, that
suddenly and unexpectedly seemed to give me a key.
The danger, so I had thought and think, is that Hardy bids fair to
become a legendary figure with an attribute, as is the way with
such figures, better known than the man himself. "Hardy, oh, yes,
the pessimist" threatens to become all the schoolboy knows and all
he needs to know of him, and his alleged philosophy of gloom is
already overshadowing the man's intense interest in strong and
appealing life. It has been the fate of many a great artist to get
a nickname, like a boy, and never be rid of it.
I do not wish by any ingenious fabrication to prove that Hardy was
not a pessimist. He is the father of the English school that
refuse to be either deists or moralists, and, like them, pushes
his stories to an end that is often bitter.
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